Performance Indicator Interpretation
What you get
A definition for every indicator: Written in plain language and held next to the figure, so there is no separate glossary to hunt for.
Interpretation of the reading: What a high or low value signals, what it means for the organisation, and where to look next.
Status against a benchmark: Each indicator is scored against a National Treasury norm or your own council-approved policy target, so the judgement is explicit.
Contextual help in the interface: Information panes attached to each dashboard area, plus maintained online help documentation.
Documentation kept current: Help and interpretation content is maintained as a standing item in the support scope, with user feedback fed into the development roadmap.
Key benefits
Defensible in the room: The number, the calculation and the meaning appear together, which is what allows an official to answer a councillor, a treasury reviewer or the Auditor-General on the spot.
Reduces dependence on consultants: Users interpret their own dashboard rather than phoning the supplier, supported by information panes and help documentation.
Bridges an uneven skills base: Interpretation assumes no prior fluency in the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), mSCOA or the Local Government Accountability Cycle, which is rarely evenly distributed across a finance department.
Both norm and policy aware: Status can reflect National Treasury’s recommended range or the organisation’s own approved target, so local context is not lost.
Additional information
Can I answer my ward councillors when they ask what this number means?
The harder problem in most reporting packs is not a missing number — it is a number nobody can explain. A current ratio, a gearing figure or a collection rate lands in front of a council committee, and the discussion stalls because no one present can say which norm it breaches, why it moved, or what the realistic remedies are. An indicator you cannot explain is an indicator you cannot defend.
Every indicator we publish therefore carries written interpretation alongside it: what the indicator is, how it is calculated, and what a high or low reading is telling you about the organisation. Interpretation is surfaced where the user is looking, through an information pane attached to that area of the dashboard, and comprehensively through maintained help documentation.
That content is written by municipal finance practitioners rather than report builders — people who have carried a deputy CFO’s responsibilities, run budget reform and Municipal Standard Chart of Accounts (mSCOA) implementation, and restructured ledgers for audit. It is the difference between showing a ratio and telling a CFO what that ratio means for the next cash-flow cycle.
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Gauteng
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Western Cape
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